See! the mean daddy taunting the defenseless buddy with the Evil Big Blue Ball. Hear! the valiant buddy huffing to scare the Ball away. Titter! at the hopeless of the buddy attempt to elude the ball, when the only thing he has to hide behind is I who am amused and not inclined to protect him.

To me Blake's behavior is evident--but can anyone else see how Blake, perched on my knee, is bobbing and weaving and eluding and peeking?

Reading: James Dickey, Deliverance

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

Listening: David Bowie's "Modern Love," which has been in my head continually for over a month now. I don't know why.

Watching: a magpie about ten feet over my head: I said, "Good morning, magpie!" (as I am wont to do) and it startled and swore at me. Probably a young magpie: can it really not have noticed me?

13 February 2001: Deliverance

The gynecologist's nurse just called me to tell me my cholesterol, for which bloodtest I walked over a mile and a half in zero degrees on an empty stomach last Friday. It's 152, which is seven points higher than when I last had it tested, the last time I gave blood, in 1996. That's last time I was fit and before the blood banks decided Lyme Disease tainted me. In turn, the 1996 test was three points more than a 1990 test; and in 1990 I was eating almost no four-footed meat. I would like to knock the cholesterol down below 150, and, thinking that, I remembered for the first time in several years the weight goal I made for myself during college, when I first began to exchange muscle for fat (also when I was thoroughly grown and a woman instead of a girl, an element in my weight gain I tend not to forgive in myself).

Soon after I graduated high school I had my first gyn. appointment and weighed 134. I remember being surprised then that my weight was that low, and so in college when I crept upward I decided my mature weight could range between 140 and 145. Somewhere in here I decided that I should keep my weight below my IQ. Last week a doctor's scale put me at 155.

What this means for me now is that I have to lose more than ten pounds or I've got to pack in some brains.

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Exercising on a Monday sets the tone for the week. Even if I only did 20' yesterday, I did some. And today I walked in. I tried to walk fast the whole way, and I could feel the exertion in the backs of my thighs and the fronts of my shins. In the afternoon I ate rather more than I needed to of chocolate candy hearts with gooey mint insides. If they had been plain milk chocolate, I might have stopped at one. But they were enhanced with mint (N.B.: chocolate can be enhanced by mint or raspberry or crunch, but it is adulterated by nuts and milk).

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For me the phrase "book of shame" is different from "movie of shame." A book of shame is one you really should have read but haven't, and I know grad students in English who haven't read Catcher in the Rye or Grapes of Wrath or Huck Finn. Length or tedium or impenetrability excuses a book from being shameful: I would never hold it against anyone for not reading Finnegans Wake unless they were doing their dissertation on Joyce. RDC's books of shame: Tristam Shandy, In Cold Blood, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Mine: Anna Karenina, Vanity Fair, Ulysses, Lord Jim...I have a long list. By contrast, a movie of shame is one that you have seen, probably multiple times, but you'd rather people not know you've seen it and would much rather no one know you love it as much as you do.

The shopping scene in "Pretty Woman." When Rupert Everett sings Neil Diamond in "My Best Friend's Wedding." "Notting Hill," "Sleeping with the Enemy," and "Steel Magnolias," start to finish. My actress of shame is, evidently, Julia Roberts.

I haven't seen "Erin Brockovich," I don't really want to see "Erin Brockovich," and I am surprised she's been nominated for best actress.

The Coen Brothers never even read the Odyssey, yet their screenplay has been nominated as an adaptation? Is Ulysses an adaptation or a work in its own right?

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Okay. I'm liking Deliverance more than I expected to. It's a boy book in spades, but it has flashes of Rightness. It's about 90 years past its school of thought, being so Naturalist (man struggles against nature but nature beats him raw; see Tess of the D'Urbervilles and McTeague). Suburban men go into the natural environment, a river gorge, and are ill prepared--even the one in excellent physical shape. Burt Reynolds was well cast as Lewis and Jon Voight as Ed in the movie version, which touches lightly on the Theme but dwells mostly on the adventure and horror.

Reading it walking home today I realized what the last line of the book should be: "I am haunted by waters." RDC was not amused, and I admit that profaning Norman Maclean like that is sacrilegious. It's a little funny, though, maybe.

I've read through the scene where the first-person narrator wakes up before his three friends, leaves them sleeping in the woods, and, walking off alone, sees a deer. Not quite so profanely this time, I thought of Fall from Innocence: the Body, but I'm sure Stephen King read Deliverance. Ewww--actually Ed and Gordy are a lot alike, quiet and introspective and the brains of the operation despite admiration for Lewis/Chris. Though Gordy never thinks about killing the deer, and Ed does tell his friends about his miss. And Bobby is Vern--fat and a hindrance, though Drew isn't really Teddy (they both wear glasses but so far Drew's ears are fine). Doctoral dissertation in that. The bit with the deer seemed wholly out of context in The Body, and I wouldn't doubt that King, writing it, really did think of Deliverance and the difference between man and boy.

And now Ned Beatty is about to squeal like a pig, reminding me of a much more recent read than A River Runs Through It or Different Seasons: the Outside magazine article Beth linked to today about the U.S. climbers held captive in the back of the beyond of a former Soviet republic. The captors ransacked the climbers' food but wanted to know what they were eating; the two parties had little human language in common but could speak enough animal that the Muslim captors could eat anything that went "bawk bawk bawk" or "moo" but could eschew anything that went "oink oink."

Which of course reminds me of Hermie the elf luring the Bumble from his cave. I'm going to go read now before my train of thought swallows its own tail and disappears entirely.